The older I get the harder I find it to dig into new music, but there are still a few new albums that make it to my ears and stay there. One is Aurora, the soundtrack for “Daisy Jones and the Six,” a Prime show that was nominated for several awards last year. Loosely based on the dramatics of my favorite band, Fleetwood Mac (if you haven’t listened deeply to Tusk and Mirage, do it now!), and featuring the singing debut of Riley Keough (Elvis Presley’s granddaughter), these catchy throwback tunes are well worth the listen. My favorite is “Let Me Down Easy.”
If you’ve met me, you’ve probably heard me talk about my love for Balkan music and dancing. I’m fresh off the return of Zlatne Uste Goldenfest in New York, the largest Balkan and Eastern European music festival in the country, which this year had over 2,000 attendees. I stayed up until 2am to catch one of my favorites, Balkan punk brass project Undertow Brass Band (the wait was worth it for the crowd surfing alone), and was also pretty blown away by Slavic Soul Party, Conical Cacophony, and the Novi Hitovi Brass Band, a musical project born at the Eastern European Folklife Center’s Balkan Camp that reunites to play each year. Now that I’ve attended the camp for a couple of summers, I understand and can appreciate firsthand the work that has gone into building this tight-knit, multi-generational community centered around a shared love of this music. We’ve got a little, burgeoning Balkan scene of our own here in the Hudson Valley. At Unicorn we host a regular Balkan dancing night with the local Mac & Cheeze Balkan Power Trio. Check our calendar and come dance with us!
Francesca Hoffman is the owner of Unicorn bar in Kingston and a recording singer-songwriter whose album The Aftermath is out now. Unicornkingston.com; Francescahoffman.com.
This article appears in March 2025.
